ABSTRACT
In fifteenth-century Valladolid, the Confraternity of All Saints (Todos los Santos) held ritual banquets on specific festive days. On the feast days of St Philip and St James (May Day), St Lawrence (10 August), and All Saints (1 November), the pious cofrades (members) enjoyed ritual meals, while hosting a number of the city's poor in the saints' honour. Composed mainly of members of the local oligarchy, merchants and other middling sorts, the Confraternity of All Saints was one of countless brotherhoods and individuals throughout Spain and the rest of the medieval and early modern West that, through wills or charitable donations, brought rich and poor together in rituals of feast or funeral.
